She likes to smile. Its a good thing. I remember when Abbi first started smiling and you had some kind of idea as to her mood. When she was first born it was just this blank set of eyes looking back at you, now she looks at you and everything else with this grand interest and emotion.

She's been sleeping much better this week. I think all week she has slept through the night which is awesome. This morning Jenn went in to get her from her crib and she was on her knees and hands as if to crawl, or stand up. So soon we'll be adjusting the crib height to prevent any dangerous situations.

Grinning

I love Abbi's face in this picture. Max was sniffing around on her and for a moment she didn't mind, then she seemed to in this exact moment I caught the picture. I Love it!

Hey There!

Abbi and her naps have been a constant struggle for Jenn and I. Not so much for Debbi one of her sitters. She regularly takes solid 2 hour naps. At home, we're lucky to get 45 minutes from her before she wakes up ready to learn more about her surroundings. We've recently tried sleeping her on her stomach during naps, like she does at daycare in the hopes that she'll sleep longer. In this picture, she fell asleep one weekend while Jenn was holding her because she was just worn out.

Napping

Raspberries are Abbi's new favorite thing to do. She's doing them constantly. Its at the point that we actually need to tell her to stop when shes eating, otherwise the food comes spitting out of her mouth.

She's been doing much better the past few days sleeping at night, and this is a trend that will hopefully continue. The strange/sad/unfortunate part is that we aren't doing anything different so its not like we know what changed to get her to sleep better. Oh well - I'm just glad she's sleeping.

Raspberries

Yesterday was Max's birthday. I posted a picture on my blog of him eating his cake. Here you can see him laying on the floor and Abbi giving him a birthday hug/tug of sorts.

Birthday Hug

Here's Abbi playing by herself in the musical chair. She's gotten to the point where she's very curious about everything else that's going on around her. At this point we usually keep her buckled into this thing so she won't fall out...again.

Say What!?

Abbi has been a handful these past few weeks and last night seemed to be yet another night continuing her awful trends. She's been waking up in the middle of the night now for about 6-8 weeks. Its inconsistent, some nights she doesn't wake up and others she does. She'll wake up 4/5 days in a row at 12:30 am. Then she'll sleep 1 or two nights, then she'll wake up at 1:30, or 4:00, or 2:30 it doesn't seem to matter.

Last night she was up from 1:30 - 2:15 crying for reasons Jenn and I were unable to figure out. Its certainly driving us both crazy at this point, if for nothing else because we can't seem to figure out what the problem is. From 2 months through 4.5ish she was good as gold once she hit the bed, not any more. Bugh.

This picture is of her while she was eating one of her many foods. I think this food on her mouth is butternut squash.

Messy

I can't wait until I can ask Abbi for a high five and she'll actually deliver. Until then, we have this. A somewhat posed, somewhat actually happened high five between Jenn and Abbi. Regardless, she enjoyed it as evident by her latest constant trend of sticking out her tongue.

Jenn finally went back to work today after 7 days off from school because of snow and holidays. It was a rough morning for Jenn. After that long she got back into the routine of full-time mom, so it was hard to head back to school today. Lucky for her its a 2 hour late start all week so she gets to ease back into things.

High Fives

Another month has gone by and even more things have changed about my little girl. The other day Abbi turned 7 months old. Its amazing how quickly the months keep passing by. It really does seem like yesterday we took her pictures for 6 months, the time just seems to fly.

Just like every other month, so much has changed with Abbi in the last month. The big deal around the house now is that she is working her ways towards crawling. She can kinda sorta crawl backwards, its more an army crawl backwards, but it is movement! She's been getting up on her knees and rocking back and forth with good energy but she has yet to turn any of that into actual forward momentum yet. I figure we're days away from a big light going off in her head and then its all over from there. No more sit her on the floor to play. She'll be mobile!

She's had a rough month teeth wise also. She's been working on both of her front two teeth, and then out of no where, another tooth next to the top two has been working its way out. There have been days when she seems to be in considerable pain, luckily the orajel seems to help her out a good bit.

As you can see from the picture, she's not content to sit with anything near her anymore. The signs that I've been printing and placing near her are no longer safe. This is true everywhere. She loves to grab and touch everything. Its neat to see her explore, but at the same time its a bit nerve wracking to try and keep her out of and away from things.

Food wise she's doing great! Jenn has been making a lot of Abbi's food at home and Abbi loves to eat it! She's taken care of carrots, peas (which she wasn't to much a fan of), beans, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and bananas. We also started breaking up and giving her puffs while we eat our dinner. I'm hoping that soon she'll be able to grasp them herself which I think will be really cool to watch her learn to do.

The last awesome thing I want to share, is that over the past month, and probably helped by the long break because of last weeks snow, there have been days where Abbi is my little girl. Most of the time she wants Jenn. But there have been times this past month where its me she wants. She wants me to hold her or play with her, and its an awesome feeling. Of course when she's pissed, it all comes back to mom for her. I suppose that's just how its going to be for a while.

7 Months

Abbi turned 7 months old over the weekend, so I know I've got to write a little bit about her. Expect that tomorrow. I still need to post the pictures we took of her on Saturday, and I'd like to put a picture with my words.

This picture was taken last week during the impromptu winter break. Abbi has spent a lot of time on the floor the past few weeks learning to crawl and move herself around. She's also been climbing on us a ton as well. Here you see her stopping for a brief moment to post and smile at me.

Ready to Go

So here's my daughter, almost 7 months old and already more fashionable than I am...

My parents bought this outfit for Abbi at Christmas and so when Jenn put it on her the other day I was told "be sure to take a picture for your mom". So mom - here's your picture. There are of course a few others, but this is one of them with her in this outfit. Jenn and I kept joking that she looked like she was out of the movie Clueless. Either way, she looked cute!

Fashonista

Jenn made this HUGE mound of snow into a slide for Abbi. You can see her here getting ready to go down again.

Slide

Yesterday was dig out day around here. But in between digging out, Jenn brought Abbi out to have a little bit of fun in the snow. Abbi is standing on the pavement below about 7-8 feet of piled up snow. Jenn turned the pile in a little slide for Abbi and loved it. I don't know how she really feels about the snow suit, but the important part is that she stays warm, which she did.

Abbi is doing much better in the department of using the bathroom. It seems as though the mixture of some juice in her bottle and changing up her foods a little did the trick. She appears to be back to normal, and she's no longer sitting in her bumbo turning red in the face pushing. So overall its much better for everyone!

Snow Bunny

This here is a picture of Abbi in the Christmas present that her Aunt Cara bought her! The other night after her bath Jenn wanted to put her in her bathrobe to keep her warm, and of course to take pictures. Definitely cute!

An update on Abbi and the laser treatment yesterday - it went pretty well in my opinion. Its certainly not easy to take her to have it done, and its even rougher on Jenn than it is me. Abbi seemed to do pretty well. This time and all future visits we had a cream to put on the area to numb it up some. This time when they were doing the actual laser treatment, she wasn't screaming. she was pissed that they were covering her eyes and holding her down, but she wasn't screaming like she was the last time that we went.

There is a bit more bruising of the skin this time around than last time, but just like last time its still smooth as can be. The bruising already looks better today than it did last night. We need to keep it moisturized throughout the day and she should be good to go in about another week.

Another update on our little girl. She's plugged up. Its awful. She screams because she can't poop. When she is pooping, she screams because it hurts. We've been giving her some juice diluted in water to try and loosen her up a bit, but haven't had to much success. She is going, its just few and far between and not as much as a 6 month old should be going. So while its a gross update, I want to mention it because as a parent, this is NOT something I ever thought about having to deal with.

Bathrobe

There isn't to much to say here that's not obvious. My wonderful wife and cute baby smiling together! Today we're taking Abbi to her second appointment at Johns Hopkins to treat her birthmark. Hopefully all will go well. I'll be leaving work early to go with Jenn and Abbi and home early for some good family time!

Smiles

Here's a little video of Abbi enjoying her first vanilla wafer last night. She licked it to death before Jenn finally helped her eat it by holding it for her so she could take little bites of it.

Note - you can click on the "HD" text on the bottom of the video for better quality and then click on the arrows to fill the screen with the video.

Vanilla Wafer

Check out that tongue. Max is ridiculous. Abbi likes him more and more each day, which is awesome by the way.

Playing Together

Over the weekend it snowed. So we stayed inside. This meant considerable family time throughout the day. At one point we were all in the bedroom (I think Jenn was putting clothes away) and I was on the floor with Abbi. After taking a few pictures of her, Jenn took a few of her and I. This is one of them that I particularly liked.

Me and Abbi